


A Strange Fashion Of Forsaking

by antivalentine



Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Canonical Character Death, Euron Greyjoy gets no credit lol, F/M, I am late to this party, Missing Scene, Post-Battle of Winterfell | Final Battle Against the White Walkers, implied mention of Shae, the only parties i go to are wakes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-16
Updated: 2020-01-16
Packaged: 2021-02-27 08:15:07
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,886
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22273909
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/antivalentine/pseuds/antivalentine
Summary: You can't let the way it ended convince you that the whole thing was a charade. It corrodes the soul.Look, I do pining and angst and major character death, OF COURSE there was eventually going to be Braime. And it was going to be canon-compliant even though I despise canon as much as the next person. And it was going to take me an eternity to post it.So canonical shit happens, and Brienne has to make her own kind of sense of it based on the little she knows.
Relationships: Jaime Lannister/Brienne of Tarth
Comments: 6
Kudos: 27





	1. Wintermoon

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Sir Thomas Wyatt's 'They flee from me', lyrics from Florence + The Machine's 'Various Storms And Saints.'

> _And I'm in the throes of it_  
>  _Somewhere in the belly of the beast_

When she woke, head splitting, in the small grey hour before dawn, she thought that perhaps she had died, after all. Perhaps she had been caught unaware by a wight springing out of the darkness; a quick death that had failed to register, knocking her soul clean out of her body. 

But no, this was definitely her body, still, hurting in new and unfamiliar ways alongside the usual achings. It was an odd heaven, if it gave her hangovers.

It was a good heaven, if it gave her him.

Stealthily, she hauled herself out of bed to poke the fire back into life. She would be sensible about this. She would go about her duties. There were wagons to be packed, walls to be rebuilt, trenches to be filled in. None of this was altered by the fact that she was no longer a maid. It was just another astonishing thing to have happened, like seeing dragons or fighting the dead.

She would keep busy. It was the only thing she could do. She didn't want to hear him trying to make some unfunny joke about how drunk they had been, as if that hadn't been entirely his fault. Or apologising. Or pretending it had never happened at all.

At sundown, she retired to her chamber, to wash her face before dinner, and there he was. Sitting by the fire, grinning.

'Have you been here all day?' She tried to sound outraged by his laziness, but her own smile tugged irresistibly at the corners of her mouth.

'Only most of it.'

'I was afraid you'd want to talk.'

'Talk? No, talking's the last thing I want to do.' He scrambled to his feet.

'You mean it wasn't…' She struggled for the words, with his eyes upon her, hot from the fire, hot with the recollection of what they had done. 'A disappointment. A mistake.'

'Why would you say that? Was I…'

'No. _No_. You know you weren't. But I…'

'Couldn't you tell?' There was something comfortingly familiar about his exasperation. 'I have never been less disappointed in my life.'

This time they didn't make it to the bed, let alone dinner.

> _The monument of a memory_  
>  _You tear it down in your head_  
>  _Don't make the mountain your enemy_  
>  _Get out, get up there instead_

'That ridiculous thing.' she said, 'Do you never take it off?'

'Too much trouble,' he said lightly, too lightly, and, after a pause, 'To be honest, I've grown quite fond of it. It serves well as a gauntlet. And I'd rather have something there than nothing.'

'I see. It's armour.'

'Yes. I suppose it is.'

'You don't need armour. Not in here. Not with me.'

'Take it off, then. If it bothers you.'

'It doesn't _bother_ me. It's just unnecessary.' But she loosened the straps and eased it off anyway, putting it to one side. His stump was sheathed in crimson silk, stiff with dirt and sweat. 'Well, that needs washing. Or I could just make you another one.'

He raised his eyebrows with a smirk.

'What, you think I can't sew? You think I was let off needlework just because I wasn't a girly girl?'

'No. But the thought of you doing it is amusing.'

She slid the sleeve off, gently. 'Velvet. You should have velvet. It'd be softer, and warmer.' She glanced back up at him and their eyes locked. 

'Why did we waste so much time?' he said wistfully.

'I haven't been wasting my time. I can't speak for you.'

'I mean. Why did we waste time not doing… this.' He trailed his left hand idly down her cheek, her neck, her shoulder, her hip. 'All those days on the road when I had two hands. Why didn't I use them?'

'They were tied together.'

'Do you have to be so literal?'

'You didn't want to. At the time. And I didn't want to. At the time.'

'Oh, but you must have.'

'You hadn't washed for a year. And you were very annoying.'

'True,' he conceded. 'But so were you.'

'I was not annoying. I was carrying out my duties.'

'When did you realise? That you wanted to?'

'When you started trying to take off my shirt.'

'Oh come on.'

She was silent for a moment. 'At the wedding, your sister said something about how I was serving you now. So I told her I didn't serve you, and she said: _But you love him_. It was a statement, not a question. And I couldn't say anything. It wasn't as if I didn't know. But I had hoped it wasn't so obvious.'

She regretted the words as soon as they were out of her mouth. They never mentioned Cersei, and now she had summoned her ghost, lying between them like the empty simulacrum of his right hand.

'I'm sorry,' he said, eventually. 'I knew I had to get you out of there. It wasn't for Sansa Stark's sake that I sent you after her, and it wasn't for Lady Catelyn. I've never been the honourable man you think me. It was only for you. You would never have been safe in Kings Landing. Not from her.'

Cersei's husband had been a great warrior, yet somehow he had been felled by a pig. There were those who said that she hurled her own son from a window so that she might sit on the throne in his stead. There were rumours, lurid rumours, about the things the Mountain was willing to do for her sake. There was no point arguing that she did not need to be protected from the Queen.

'Three times,' she said, awed. 'Three times you saved me, and you say you're not the man I think you are?'

He shrugged. 'It was selfishness. I didn't want you on my conscience. I wanted you alive.'

'I am alive. I've never been more alive.'

> _You saw the stars out in front of you_  
>  _Too tempting not to touch_

It had never occurred to her that one day she might take a lover. She was not the sort of woman who would do such things, not the sort of woman who would ever have the option. Men did not find her attractive, which was a mercy. It was hard enough proving oneself even without the burden of a pretty face. She had never known how seriously to take Tormund Giantsbane, suspecting his admiration of her to be merely a tediously drawn-out joke, something to amuse himself and his comrades. She had always been a figure of fun. That was simply how it was. The only way to stop them laughing was to knock them down.

She had never wanted to be Renly's mistress. Even if the idea had not been so painfully absurd, it would not have been right. She simply wanted to serve him, and the fact that he could never return her love only made it purer and more noble. Knights jousting for the honour and glory of their ladies did not do so with the intention of sleeping with them, since that would have destroyed the very virtue they were seeking to uphold. Their loves lived on pedestals, elevated, untouchable.

Whatever this was, it was not that.

Ser Loras had been Renly's lover. Which had not been like marriage, a duty, a matter of cementing alliances and begetting heirs, a way of keeping girls indoors and murdering them in childbed. It was a choice; something which did not need to be compelled by vows or ceremonies because it was something they wanted to do.

And yet this did not feel like a choice. It was more than mere wanting. She couldn't _not_. She woke sweating, tangled up in furs, tangled up in him, and knew that she could not have said him nay. It was like fighting, and it was like dancing, and it was also like neither of those things, in much the same way as fighting and dancing were both like and unlike each other. Fuck loyalty. Fuck honour. _Fuck_.

> _And the air was full_  
>  _Of various storms and saints_

It was hard to get much done on blizzard days. The courtyard was a whirl of whiteness, the air so clogged with snow you could hardly see your own hand in front of your face. Lady Sansa retreated to the library and pored over account books, counting the cost of wars past and budgeting for battles that might be yet to come. Boys sparred in the corridors, girls lit candles and got on with their mending. The snow made everything quieter, and it was quiet enough already. The soldiers were marching south; the northerners had drifted back to their homes, rebuilding their villages, mourning their dead. Neither of them could tear themselves from the crackling warmth of her fire.

'Today would have been Myrcella's name day,' Jaime said with studied carelessness, throwing a toothpick into the flames.

She watched its brief flare, bright sparks against the sooty stone, and waited.

'She'd have been married, by now. Children of her own. She'd have been happy. She deserved to be happy. She deserved to live.' He looked at her, eyes glistening, and she laid her hand upon his golden one.

'She knew. She was the only one of them who knew, and she forgave me. She said she was glad I was her father.' He sounded incredulous. 'Even though the only thing I ever did for her was try to bring her back home. Too little, too late.'

'You didn't have a choice. You did your best.'

'But it wasn't good enough. She died in my arms. It was almost as if… saying it, admitting it, was a kind of poison. The corruption of it all. None of it was her fault. Her mother said she couldn't imagine how something so pure could have come out of us. It. Everything.'

He still couldn't utter Cersei's name. She didn't know whether to be glad or sorry.

'The children were hers. Only hers. And I understood that, it was necessary. All I could do was take her home to her mother. Alive. And I failed.'

She thought of the promise he had made to Lady Catelyn. She thought of Myrcella, whom she had never seen, would never meet, just another pretty child bartered for power. She thought of what he had said at Riverrun. _Girls like her don't live very long_. 

'She was yours. The good in her came from you. And she acknowledged you. That was a gift. Take it.'

He leaned across and kissed her, then -- urgently, as he had that first night, as if he couldn't hold back a moment longer -- and she of course kissed him back, for there was nothing much else to be done on blizzard days.

> _But even though it shocked you  
>  Something's electric in your blood_

They kept coming, the wights. The papery skin flapping loose around their skulls, their gumless mouths grimacing, their bony fingers grabbing. Smoke filled her nostrils, her lungs, stung her eyes. Oathkeeper felt heavier than usual, slower to move, but she wielded it anyway. Cut, thrust, parry. Duck, slice, stab.

The customary glance to her left, just in time to see a dead wildling digging its claws into his cheek and tearing the flesh from the bone. Everything was weirdly silent. She only heard her own voice screaming his name. A roar in her ears. A snarling face springing out of the darkness, colliding with her, knocking her to the ground…

Out of the nightmare, back into her bed. She gasped for air.

'Brienne?' Either she had jolted him awake, or he had not been sleeping in the first place.

'Battle dream,' she said hoarsely, trying to be matter-of-fact.

'Come here.' She laid her head down on his chest, wrapped her arm around him. 'What did they do this time?'

'Ripped your face off.'

'Shit. That was always my best feature.'

She couldn't close her eyes again, not yet. She felt his breath rise and fall underneath her, steadying her own. The firelight, still blazing.


	2. Gone

> _And people just untie themselves_  
>  _Uncurling lifelines_  
>  _If you could just forgive yourself_

The bed was empty. His sword no longer hanging next to hers. His clothes vanished.

It couldn't be. 

But of course it was.

She wasn't aware of getting out of bed, she didn't remember putting on her robe, she could not even recall whether she added to the fire on her way out, but nor did she remember panicking. She was in fight mode, that place where instinct took over, where the mind handed over the reins to the body and hoped for the best.

He was saddling his horse and talking nonsense. The usual, self-flagellating nonsense. And he kept saying that name, over and over. _Cersei. Cersei. Cersei._ The hiss of it, a sword slicing through the icy air.

She took his head between her hands and made him look at her. Their eyes would meet, and he'd remember, and he'd stop talking nonsense and come back to bed. But he'd anticipated her there, and when she looked at him he was gone, walled off somewhere inside himself. She knew that look. _What are you doing?_ she'd demanded, all those years ago, when he'd gone missing from his own eyes.

_Stay with me._

_Stay_.

He was going. He was gone. In spite of everything. In spite.

It always came up on your blindside. Always. It snuffed you out without warning and you woke up with a start. With an end.

> _But still you stumble, feet give way._  
>  _Outside the world seems a violent place_

Saddle your own horse, take your sword. You know these roads better than he does. You'll have caught up to him by sunrise.

And then what?

There had been a time when she would have raised her blade against him in the name of duty. There had been a time when she dreaded the prospect of having to do so. Not now. She would as soon cut off her own hand as risk hurting him. He knew that, and he would not fear her. Not a problem in itself; she had defeated many men who were not afraid of her. But those were men she wanted to defeat. What kind of adversary wanted you alive, and back in their bed?

Oh, she could probably overpower him. Technically. She was strong enough to lead him back to Winterfell as her prisoner. Find a cell for him, lock him away. Just to keep him breathing.

And whatever this was, whatever this had been, this thing that was between them, would be gone, broken beyond repair.

It was already broken. He was already gone.

(She realised she was kneeling, that her legs had given way without her noticing or feeling anything.)

Or she could go with him, on his suicide mission. Burn with him, if he insisted on burning. 

But he wanted her alive.

It occurred to her that she did not want to accompany him on his suicide mission because she did not want to die. She noted this fact dispassionately, like checking her own pulse. It was unexpected. He was gone and she was weeping in the snow, and yet. And yet. 

Somehow, I'm still breathing, she thought. Somehow, I don't want to be dead.

Brienne got to her feet, legs stiff with the cold, eyes raw with crying. Dawn was beginning to stain the sky a soft silvery pink, like a hideous joke. She wanted a blizzard to stop him in his tracks. Who was she fooling. It would only remind him how much he hated the fucking north.

> _But you took your toll on me_  
>  _So I gave myself over willingly_

After what seemed like hours of wandering (because she could not go back to that empty bed, she could not go back to the fire, she wanted only wide empty cold and desolation) she donned her armour and went to deliver the news to Lady Sansa; who displayed no surprise, only asked 'Did you quarrel?'

She wondered how much Sansa knew. She must have heard whispers. She might even have heard the tale from Tyrion, before he left. It didn't matter now.

'No, my lady. When he declared his intention to leave, yes, obviously I opposed that.' She was astonished at the sound of her own voice, so calm, so level. 'But not before. No.'

Podrick was the only one to be shocked.

'He _left_ you, ser?'

'Yes, Pod. He left me. Don't gawp like that. Those walls won't build themselves.'

She knew she shouldn't be so harsh on the lad, but if she let him express any sympathy for her she would only turn into a blubbering mess. Again. And it was foolish, on his part, to be surprised that Jaime Lannister should have gone back to his sister, his queen, his other half. The very first time she met him he had been boasting, perversely, of his fidelity to her, trying to provoke a reaction.

She was stupid for believing it could end any other way.

Not that she had allowed herself to believe anything, exactly. She had always been so careful not to think about the future. She must have known, deep down, they didn't have one. Just like that first morning, thinking it was far, far too good to be true.

But she had trusted him. She didn't see how she could have done anything else. The way he looked at her. The way he held her. The way he found his way inside her, night after night. Yes, she had feared he would regret it, think it was a disappointment, a mistake. It might have been those things. But it was never a lie.

> _Oh, you got a hold on me_  
>  _I don't know how I don't just stand outside and scream_

Days passed. They passed as they had passed before the battle. Before. She would not, could not, go chasing after him. Her duty was here. Lady Sansa would never be safe from the Dragon Queen as long as she refused to bend the knee, and she would never bend the knee. Sooner or later -- it might be months, it might be years -- her army would return, and next time they would not be allies.

It was a comfort, in its way. Duty. Loyalty. Honour. The oaths that held her here, and gave her a purpose. As they had when she lost Renly, and found Lady Catelyn.

The ravens came. It was as Sansa had said; it only took one dragon to destroy a city. Daenerys had made good on her father's threat to burn them all, and Jon Snow had murdered her to avenge it. 

'Arya went to kill Cersei but the job was done for her. She says no-one could have escaped the Red Keep alive. If the Kingslayer ever made it there, he would not have made it out again. I'm sorry.'

Lady Sansa might, she thought, have left the epithet aside for once, given what her brother had done. She nodded curtly, turned and left, so that her lady would not have to see her weep.

She had never been so angry with him.

She had bullied him into living left-handed, she had defended him in the great hall at Winterfell, she had cut down corpse after corpse whose only desire was to make him like them… and then he refused to let her save him again. He threw his life away as if it hadn't been worth the effort. As if it didn't matter that she wanted him alive.

She had never been foolish enough to believe he could survive dragon fire. She had understood, when he rode away, that she would never see him again. On the other hand, she'd thought the same thing every time she left him, or he left her. Nothing was ever guaranteed. Every time they met it was unexpected, a blessing.

_If he ever made it there_.

There was always the possibility that he'd realise he wouldn't make it in time, realise he was chasing ghosts, realise he couldn't, after all, leave her. He'd come riding back and she would run to him and hit him, over and over, till they collapsed in each other's arms, laughing and crying.

She wished she'd told him, when she had the chance, how much she admired him for overcoming the loss of his sword-hand -- the hours of training he must have put himself through to be able to hold his own in battle, to fight alongside her, to be useful again. He could easily have retired from the fray, served only his sister, lived out his days quietly until the dragons came for them.

The only time he'd run from a fight was at the end, when she was battling to make him stay.

And now he was gone, he was gone, and she was going to have to learn to live left-handed. She was going to have to live in a world without him in it, and if he wasn't already dead she would have wanted to kill him.


	3. The Saddest Word

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Obviously I'm not going around inventing Valyrian phrases for people who can actually speak it, but this is Tyrion so I can blame any weirdness on him.

> _But you had to have him, and so you did  
>  Some things you let go in order to live_

'Ser Brienne, may I speak with you a moment?'

It would be longer than a moment, no doubt, but she dipped her head and followed the Hand as he made his way through the ruined courtyard.

'You have the right to know, I think, what happened to my brother.'

'I assume that he died.' Her tone was flat. She wasn't going to let hope in. If he had lived, he would be here. He would be with her.

'He was captured by the Unsullied, skulking around the night before the battle. I let him go. It was treason, and I was punished for it, but I thought there was a chance of getting them on a boat to Pentos. He once did the same for me. They got as far as the crypt but the ceiling collapsed on them before they could make it out.' He paused, and added, more gently, 'She was carrying his child.'

You are vigilant, you are armoured, and still, she thought, death springs out of the dark and steals your breath. _His child_.

'If I hadn't released him they'd have slit his throat with the rest of the prisoners. I didn't know that at the time. As it was… I found them. Afterwards. I don't think he suffered. He wasn't burned, he didn't look like he'd suffocated. The stones must have knocked him out. It would have been quick.'

She wondered whether this was meant to be comforting. 

'There's a phrase in High Valyrian. _Muña morghoro_. It means a parent with no living children. When I learned it as a boy, I thought it must be the saddest word in the world.'

Brienne only nodded. The two boy kings. The bleeding bride of Dorne. They were always already lost to him. He could not claim them, could not save them, and now they were dust and ashes.

'If she could have saved that last child, she would. She'd have done anything for her children. They deserved that chance. All three of them.'

She kept her expression diplomatically blank. No monarch who wished to hold on to their throne would ever have let Cersei slink quietly into exile. There would have been soldiers and spies and assassins the length and breadth of Essos, all tasked with making sure neither she nor any of her heirs lived. What chance? There was no chance. She could not tell whether Tyrion believed what he was saying, or whether he was merely trying to justify his actions.

It also didn't matter.

'But they died anyway.'

'Yes,' he said, heavily. 'They died anyway.'

'And were buried together.' A statement, not a question.

He sighed. 'I don't know. I was locked up within an hour of finding them, and by the time I got out the stones had been cleared and they were gone. There were a lot of Unsullied with nobody left to fight, I suppose. No-one would tell me what had been done with them. But the last time I saw them, yes. Buried together, as you say.'

She tried not to think of his head being put on a pike and paraded round the smoking streets by angry citizens or triumphant Northern soldiers, his hand being harvested as a trophy by some Dothraki looter, his sword, bent and twisted, snatched up to be smelted down and made anew. A blue velvet pouch, stitched by the light of a distant fire, repurposed to hold a stranger's stolen gold. She didn't need to be told how war worked. 

As much as she wanted to blame Tyrion, as much as she wanted to blame the two queens who burned so many people between them, there was no vengeance to be had. Nobody else had saddled his horse in the middle of the night and ridden it into a burning city. He did it to himself.

Defending the innocent. 

If he had told her about the child, she would always have known that he could never stay. It would have poisoned everything. Keeping that from her was a terrible thing to do, yet even now she could not bring herself to wish he had acted differently. Whatever it was -- that was not marriage but had left her widowed, that was not service but had left her kneeling -- whatever it had been, it was _necessary_. 

It was an important thing, and it had been taken from her.

But it was also a gift.

'I wanted to thank you. You made him happy. There wasn't much in his life that was happy. I made my own contribution to that, I know. But I'm glad he had the time with you that he did. I only wish it could have been longer.'

'I didn't make him happy,' she said. 'Nobody could.'

'But he loved you.'

_But you love him_.

She stopped walking, and the words came out in a rush, pent up as they had been since the night he left. 'He wanted me to _hate_ him. So I wouldn't try to stop him. Or follow him. Or grieve his loss. How could he have thought that would work?'

'Because sometimes it does.' A look of pain passed over his face. 'You can't let the way it ended convince you that the whole thing was a charade. It corrodes the soul. Of course he loved you. As you loved him. No-one who saw you together could doubt it. It shone out of your faces every time you looked at each other. And nothing undoes that; nothing that happened before, nothing that happened after. You deserved to know why he left, and you deserved to know that he didn't suffer. And now my duty is done, and you may return to yours.'

It was a while before she could speak. 'Thank you, Lord Tyrion.' 

'Ser Brienne,' he called, as she was on her way back to the King, and she turned.

'You couldn't have saved him. No more than I could.'

'My lord.'

It wouldn't do to contradict him.

> _While all around you the buildings sway_  
>  _Sing it out loud, who made us this way?_  
>  _I know you're bleeding, but you'll be okay_  
>  _Hold on to your heart, you'll keep it safe_

Had Jaime gone with the intention of putting an end to Cersei before the dragon could? Before she could use whatever stocks of wildfire she might have had left? Had the walls come tumbling down upon them before or after his dagger could find its way to her heart?

She had no way of knowing. Either way, it would have been for mercy. He would have been saving her, the child, the city, from something worse. 

Even if it were only dying alone.

Her life now, her purpose, was protecting Lady Catelyn's only surviving son; the strange, abstracted boy whom Jaime had failed to kill, who survived his fall as Jaime's son had not survived his, and who would always be regarded by some as a Northern usurper, the son of a traitor, a puppet in the hands of the Imp. 

Arya had sailed west to plunder what gold she could to repay the Lannister debts. There were songs about her already, the little wolf and her Needle. There was an especially gory ballad concerning the beautiful Queen of the North and the husband she had fed to his own hounds. There were songs about the Crow King, and songs about the Raven King (the latter generally commissioned by Tyrion). 

If there had ever been songs hymning the Kingslayer, which was doubtful, nobody sang them any more.

Let the hateful name die with him. He wasn't that. He was Jaime, Ser Jaime, her Jaime. She lived in his chambers, she wore his titles, she swore his oaths. She took her sword (which would always be his) and she charged Ser Podrick, the gift he had almost forgotten, to be brave, to be just, to defend the innocent.


End file.
